Tag Archives: time travel

In diving into The Time Travel Chronicles, I dive into a long tradition of Science Fiction / Alternate History stories on time travel. I’ve only started into the book with Gambit and Hereafter. This is a great anthology from different perspectives, temperaments, and storylines all examining time travel. The first story I read (second in the book) is from the perspective of an historian (how cool would it be to do first-hand research; not just original sources depicting the even, but the even itself.) and the other is from a scientist. Both have the descriptive detail and moving narrative arc of a storyteller. The Time Travel Chronicles was released just 4 days ago and tonight there’s a celebratory Facebook Launch Party! Join the fun if you want to (virtually) meet some cool authors and learn a bit more about the book (which happens to be #1 amongst SciFi Anthologies right now).

Rysa Walker

While not the first in the book, I started with Rysa Walker’s Gambit because I recently finished Time’s Divide and was still well immersed in the Chronos Files world (starting in Time Bound, then Time’s Edge and concluding with Time’s Divide). In this story, we find a lovely peek into the first blush of Saul and Katherine’s relationship, Saul’s megalomaniac mind, and late 18th spiritualist manipulations. Ms. Walker does a nice job explaining the potential dilemmas of a time traveling historian – her main point being that we would all succumb to meddling to prevent horror and evil. We would all have fixed it so the bomb would go off in Hilter’s Eagles Nest. We would push Kennedy down sooner. We would whisk Archduke Ferdinand away. (Would that really stop the Great War? Unlikely.) As she wrote: “Even those of us who have absolute faith in our ability to screw things up might be tempted to tweak things just a bit, whether for humanitarian reasons or for personal gain.” In other words, we would all succumb, whether for good intentions or ill, to play God, even with a deep understanding of the law of unintended consequences. It is the sin as old as time itself.

Samuel Peralta

The next story I read, Hereafter, I read because of, well, science. Mr. Peralta writes from the perspective of a scientist. I got science, but I also got poetry and a poignant love story. Due to the physics of time travel in this book, there are only time slices accessible to us for brief periods. Like a temporal strobe light, people meet at touch points. Long distance relationships are rough, meeting in snippets of time is rougher.

While I’ve yet to read the rest of the anthology, and I will be updating this post as I do, these two stories are indicative of how differently a theme can be handled. Different isn’t bad. I love the diverse, but good perspectives both elicit. I anticipate the remaining stories to be equally diverse and well done.

Kudos to Crystal Watanabe for editing such a great anthology and all the authors for bringing their inner worlds to life for us on such a fun and provocative topic.

It’s funny how things come together. We have times where you’ll see similar themes emerge quite organically in culture. We’ve seen movies recently about mathematical and scientific geniuses like Alan Turing in The Imitation Game and Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. But clearly it isn’t just the smarts that bring us to the movies. There has to be a dramatic element and often a romantic element. I love to see this mix, this intersection of art and science, partly to connect to what would seem so foreign such as esoteric string theory and quantum mechanics or game theory and cryptography. Now, of course, Mr. Turing has built-in drama in his life and in his work during the war. Mr. Hawking has a embedded drama in his life as well in pushing beyond his terrible disease to keep working.

Martha Goddard

Austrailian Writer/Director Martha Goddard has a new short (15 minutes) out called Gödel, Incomplete starring Elizabeth Debicki (The Great Gatsby, upcoming Man from Uncle) and Matt Zeremes (Burke&Wills, Australian TV shows The Surgeon,Home and Away). This movie aligns itself well with the geek chic that we have seen in the last few years with everything from Numb3rs and comedy The Big Bank Theory to Sherlock and Elementary. Gödel, Incomplete celebrates the intellect and relationship whilst leaving an intriguing question about Kurt Gödel’s research that led to thinking on time-travel. Indeed, in a separate post, I’ll explore a little bit more on this coming together of worlds celebrated by geeks and others.

Returning to the movie, however, there are some theoretical underpinnings posited by Mr. Gödel related to time travel. In particular, the Gödel Metric, timeline curves which could allow for a form of time travel, are well established. The application of rotating universes leading to time travel was thought by most of Mr. Gödel’s colleagues to be results of Mr. Gödel’s mental deterioration and paranoia. It was a work left undone. So, the title is a nod to both the Gödel Incompleteness Theorem (basically showing , using a self-referential mathematics, that all of math cannot be derived from a set of axioms) and his unfinished work on time travel.

Matt Zeremes

The movie starts out with a young woman, who is a particle physicist, working late at a particle accelerator (in fact the LHC). When she initiates the smashing of atoms at enormous speeds, it seems to put her into a time warp. She is led once to an older Gödel and later to a younger. Now it’s hard to say much about a 15-minute film without giving away spoilers. What I will say is that this short film does what any great form of short story does. It paints in hints and short brushstrokes of brief frames to build a whole relationship, a development over time. It’s rather stunning that Ms. Goddard is able to build this world, this relationship, this idea of time travel with such a brief use of time.

Elizabeth Debicki

There are so many perfect production touches in film; I’ll simply give away one (small) spoiler: on returning from an early time trip, our protagonist, Serita, loses her cookies. I can imagine a little bit of time travel might be disorienting. So too, might meeting an older Kurt Gödel. She even puts to good use a bad habit; our physicist smokes, nicely tying into an earlier time when many smoked. Each of these touches make it feel more real. The music (excellent work by Basil Hogios, sets much of the atmosphere of the movie), transition scenes into Gödel’s world, and clarity of the frames without being harshly stark all point to great production value despite being a short film. While the roles only provide glimpses, the actors really do a nice job communicating with eyes, body language and movement to sustain that sense of developed familiarity. As I indicated above, I’ll dive deeper into this intersection of science, mathematics and humanities, for lack of a better word, that seem to be bubbling up everywhere, but I simply love its expression here.

It would be fabulous to see this project extended to flesh out the relationship even further, to build out the notion of time travel and the effects that it has on both Serita, Kurt Gödel, and others in their circle. Mr. Gödel clearly had some demise in his paranoia; he was also one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century. I would even say he’s the century’s Fermat. Not only did he rebut Russell and Whitehead, propose the P versus NP problem (which figured nicely in a season two episode of Elementary), provided Einstein with solutions involving close time-like curves related to his theory of general relativity, he even dabbled in theology. In other words, he is an intersection point; back in the day we called them renaissance men (and women) So, it’s at least fun to posit that his theoretical underpinnings of time travel have some less theoretical application. Seeing more bones put on that in the context of this complex cross-time relationship would be intriguing and entertaining. In a mere 15 minutes, Ms. Goddard inflames that curiosity while also leaving us with a sense of, well I can’t say without spoilers (I know, mean, right?).

So, while it’s hard for most of us regular Joe’s (OK, pun intended) to get to a showing of this, I’ve been in contact with Ms. Goodard and she’s been kind enough to provide access to those interested. Contact her here. I think it’s been in New York and Miami, if you do have an opportunity to see on the big screen, take it. It’s some of the best 15 minutes you’ll spend

I was completely drawn in by the trailer. In many ways, the film completely delivered that vision although not the focus. It suggests that the movie is mainly about the love between Peter (Farrell) and Beverly (Findlay); it’s mainly about good v.s. evil; the good, hidden away in the one, and overflowing from the other. The cinematography is fabulous, the acting is great (especially Mr. Farrell’s) and the story premises matches the trailers promise. Alas, the story is ultimately disappointing; it is a story where you must suspend you disbelief not simply on magical elements but on the underlying meaning ascribed to events.

This is one of the very few times I can’t say that’s due to the movie’s take on the book because I uncharacteristically didn’t read the book first. So this is purely a review of movie. While you often don’t want to examine too closely the believe systems in fantasy and SciFi movies; over analyzing those movies sucks the joy out of them. This movie not only invites it but seems to ensure you are confronted with the notion that life’s motive and purpose matter but, as you dive into that, it’s not at all clear why. In particular, you are guided throughout the story and, especially through voice-overs, to give meaning to why events conspire as the do. However, when you come to the ultimate event and culminating meaning, there is no satisfying explanation. I’ll describe this more below since to do so will involved spoilers.

The story centers around the clash between good and evil as portrayed by Peter Lake & Beverly Penn and Pearly Somes and his gang. Peter worked as a thief for Pearly but decides to quit working for him; it’s never explicitly stated but presumed that he no longer wants to work for such a bad guy. Pearly is hacked because Peter is talented, he raised him to the task and no one walks away from Pearly. Peter does not give up completely on stealing however. He attempts to steal from the Penn’s but instead falls for Beverly.

The cast is superb. Mr. Farell has a combination of nonchalance and intensity that enables him to move equally between love, fear and defiance. Ms. Findlay, well the entire audience falls in love with her. She is both innocent and perceptive, beguiling and beguiled. She is full of joie de vie in the midst of dying of consumption (TB); ironically the very reason Peter’s father is not allowed to immigrate. Ms. Findlay does this so naturally that you believe she simply is this way and cannot be otherwise. Then you remember Downton Abbey where she is fiery and nice but nothing to this degree. Mr. Crowe exudes evil and brutishness. Mr. Smith steals each scene he’s in and is both daunting and funny. Mr. Hurt, Ms. Connelly and Ms. Saint all play their parts perfectly. Finally, as we all love Beverly Penn so do we love her sister Willa; I don’t know whether Miss Twiggs is naturally disarming and charming or not but she certainly projected this on screen.

It’s hard to project magical fantasy well. Winter’s Tale does this beautifully. The New York portrayed is one of imagination and fable; a wintery wonder land in which castles exist by the lakeside, bridges go unused by all but the players and flying horses are mingled with cars and pedestrians. Nearly each frame is a work of art. The soundtrack meshes well in this world. Both haunting and lyrical, the music evokes longing and hope for good to win out even while events seem to conspire against those about whom we care. K T Tunstall is at her best on Miracle (which saying something); stay for the credits simply to hear her.

***SPOILERS BELOW***

Early on in the story, Beverly provides a voice-over narrative describing lovely mythology about love and desire, how we become stars after this life (or lives) and perhaps, if we love deeply enough, the beloved will not die. Beverly dies and becomes a star; her miracle to give (presummably because she is good and loving) is for Peter to live on even after his seeming death at the hands of Pearly. Why? What his purpose? He goes modern but in forgetfullness. There is something tugging on him but he doesn’t know what it is; it simply comes out as a drawing of a red-headed girl and the moon; Beverly. Then he discovers his purpose – to save the true model of the drawing, a little girl, Abby. Why. We never know. The film explicitly indicates the no one’s life is more valuable than another yet all of this sacrifice of miracle and time are so that she may live. There is no reason given. I may be that Mr. Helprin was simply raising questions and ideas while not providing answers. The movie, however, places a stake in the ground with a clear arrow for which direction it’s going then fails to deliver. Does this mar the whole film? In the sense that the crescendo remains unresolved, yes. I will watch it again. I will ignore the attempt at voiced-over explanation and simply live in each moment without any further purpose and enjoy that for what it is – a visual, sonic and, to a lesser extent, emotional feast. I will understand that I’m watching a really good film that reached for greatness and fell a bit short.